sorry to crash your world view

Who: Gabe and Eben
Where: Outdoor basketball court
When: Late Afternoon

Gabe was starting to pretend the world was normal again, that one day of insanity could be forgotten, so long as it didn't repeat itself. He had no explanation for what had transpired and it didn't peak his interest so much as scare him off. While some people might go looking for answers, he preferred to act as if a question hadn't been asked in the first place.

The best thing to do in such a situation was to get out and stay active. Today his choice was basketball, and though he wasn't anything spectacular at it, he could shoot hoops. He also knew it was a fairly easy game to bring other people into, which was just what he was hoping for.

Eben probably wasn't going to be pulled into a game. This would be because he was still injured, one arm in a sling, and he still looked a bit like he'd been in a nasty fight, which he had, he supposed. His pain meds were still keeping him in generally good if high spirits, and he happened to be out walking around. So, when he saw one of the guys he went to school with, but hadn't spoken to that much, he sat down at the edge of the court to watch for a while. "You've got decent form." he told Gabe after he made a shot.

Gabe turned at the sound of Eben's voice and smiled. "Thanks," he said, "It's not my game, but I try. Gotta find something to keep me occupied till there's ice on the lake." He just couldn't afford to pay at the indoor rink everyday, nice as that would be. "I'd ask you to join, but that might be a bit difficult. Ya get in a fight?" he asked, shooting another hoop. It seemed a reasonable assumption, at least to him. He'd been in enough that he knew most of the signs, though the sling said it was a particularly nasty one, if that was the case.

"Yeah, there were these shadows things, and they came to cut up my family. Did you not notice them?" Eben asked, watching the lines of probability spiderwebbing off of Gabe in a pretty sort of fashion. All the different choices he had, and the ball...well that was like it's own little supernova of randomness.

The ball flew out of Gabe's hands a touch too early as he cringed, missing the shot. Retrieving it, he dribbled for a moment, looking back at Eben. "Yeah, I ran into them at school. They came after me at my house and my mom locked us in the attic. Family time fun," he said, rolling his eyes. "Things seem... normal now, I guess."

"I guess. I suppose it would depend on what one considers normal." Eben said thoughtfully. He for one didn't actually have much of a definition. Not really. And it was becoming less and less of an option even, the longer things went on. He didn't offer anything more than that, merely watching Gabe, and tipping probability in the other guy's favor for his next shot.

When Gabe made the next shot he smiled, not having expected to make any while on such a subject. "Back to how they were last Monday maybe?" Gabe said, not all that sure himself. "Or maybe just... not infested with shadow things. Shadows sticking to the ground only seems normal to me." Though now that he'd seen them elsewhere, Gabe thought he'd always be suspicious. "Everyone else okay?" he asked.

Eben figured his own definition of normal had gone out the window when vampires had shown up and started tearing up the town, but that was just him. He didn't know if Gabe had even been around at that point, now that he was thinking about it. He didn't pay enough attention to really know when people came or went. "My parents are alright. My mom was in the hospital overnight. And a friend of mine's arm was wounded and got infected, but I brought her to the hospital too." he said. "You and yours?"

From the sound of it, Gabe had been lucky. Sure, he'd been beaten and bruised by those things, but he'd gotten away before any real damage had occurred. His mother had taken a crowbar to any that came near her and had found it made a damn good weapon of choice. "We're okay. It's just my mom and me, and she proved herself to be decent with a crowbar. We were lucky," he said. It was something he'd realized when his mom's phone had started ringing off the hook. So many unnecessary deaths...

"Sounds that way." Eben said with a little nod. "Good for you, then." he added, not bitter in the slightest. But then, Eben hadn't been bitter about anything in his whole life, so that would have been a feat. "I suppose things will go back to non-shadow-creature-attacks now. Maybe it'll stay that way. You weren't here for when things were bad before?" he asked curiously. "When the...va--gangs came through town?" He barely caught himself there. It wasn't in his nature to try and hide things, so it was a little weird for him to even try.

"I was, but..." What was he supposed to say at that point? That he'd been completely and totally oblivious? Claire had said vampires had attacked and he just couldn't believe her. It didn't seem real. "That might have been one of the weekends I went to visit my dad. I know stuff happened, but I managed to avoid it? I don't know. I've heard rumors about... stuff. It's all a little surreal."

"It was a little longer than a weekend." Eben said. But he didn't sound accusatory about it. "Good that you managed to avoid it though. It was...intense." he landed on. Intense was one way of putting it. He'd seen a man who was flying. He'd seen a girl kick the head off of a vampire. He'd almost gotten shot, and had nearly been vampire food. Intense was definitely a word for it.

Gabe didn't know what to say. He'd been oblivious, but then, so had half the town. There'd been stuff on the news about the gangs, but there hadn't been a ton of footage. Everything was hearsay. He had seen some of the aftermath, though. That had been nasty. "I think I just lucked out and managed to miss the worst of it," Gabe said, glad he had, but wishing he had a better explanation. "Would have been nice to miss this one as well."

"...you weren't hurt. Basically, you did." Eben said, smiling a little at Gabe. "Unless you mean, that you really just wish that you'd not known about anything." He wondered at that, and it sparked up his curiosity. Leaning back on his good arm, he regarded Gabe for a long moment. "If you could choose to not know anything about anything, would you do that?" he wound up asking. "Willing ignorance?"

It was a question to ponder, and Gabe held the ball as he did so. If he could, would he really want to forget it all happened? It was what he'd been working for since it all went down, but if the choice had been a real one, would he take it? "I don't know," Gabe answered. "I guess it depends on if it was a fluke or not. If one day out of my life changes my perspective on the rest without reason, then sure, I'd want it gone. But if there's more to come? Then forgetting only forestalls then inevitable and makes me less prepared for the next go round."

Eben waited patiently for the answer, and was actually pleased with the one he got. It was thoughtful, interesting. So, he appreciated. "Do you really think that this is a one-off, and that'll be it?" he asked curiously. There were the cats earlier in the summer, too. All those creepy cat-clone-things. They'd left him alone, but he knew people who'd gotten tagged by them. Then there were the vampires, then there were the shadows. "Do you wonder?" he asked. "If those are out there, what else is?"

Eben's questions gave Gabe chills as it forced him to think about all the things he purposefully hadn't. What if Claire was right? What if there really were vampires out there? And if there were vampires, there could be anything, right? He'd always thought of himself as fearless, but this was a possibility that made him want to curl up in a corner and hide. His defenses seemed so useless against something like... like that. "I want it to be. If I could will it that way, I probably would. And I've gone my whole life without seeing anything like it, so... what if it's another ten years before I see anything else?" Gabe said, coming to take a seat next to Eben. "I wonder, but I don't know where to start other than, like, horror movies and shit. If those are out there, then I'd be screwed, you know?"

Eben's bright blues followed Gabe as he came to sit down, and he was listening avidly. "Well, there were the cat things this summer, you missed those." Eben told him. "And the gangs weren't really gangs. I know a few things. Not a whole lot though. I've never seen anything like what's been happening lately. The frequency of it all is really...staggering."

"I was with my dad this summer," Gabe said, agreeing with the fact that he'd missed the cat things, or whatever they were. He'd come back to Marquette just in time for school, though that didn't mean he'd been completely aware of what was going on around him at the time. "I heard something like that, from Claire, about the gangs. I... I don't know anything, really. I don't know what's real and what's not." It felt like he was losing his mind, even when everyone else had told him he wasn't.

"What did she tell you about the gangs?" Eben asked curiously. Because if someone else had already dropped the vampire bomb, he could stop being careful about his wording. Which would be nice, Eben was a person who didn't especially enjoy talking around things. It wasn't really in his nature. "And reality is subjective." he added.

"She said they were vampires," Gabe said, his voice getting progressively softer so that the last word came out as a whisper. He felt ridiculous just saying it, especially so seriously, as if Eben was going to laugh at him. Gabe, the fool who fell for the insane supernatural joke, or something like that. Even if he'd seen the bite marks on the corpses at the morgue, it was hard to accept.

"Oh, that'd be cuz they were." Eben told him with a light smile and a nod. "One got at me, there was this huge street fight, I thought I was dead. Actually that's where this came from too." he said, pointing up to the light pink discoloration around his eye. It was almost gone, but there were faint traces. "I have the scars on the back of my neck and shoulder, if you wanted to see." he added. Even if it might be a bit of a pain in the ass, considering he had all new stitches and his arm was still sprained and in a sling. But, if Gabe wanted to see the evidence, he could.

Gabe just stared, almost as if Eben had admitted to being a vampire himself. Being bitten by a vampire, or attacked, made him just as rare as the creature attacking, at least in Gabe's book. While he couldn't deny the scars, accepting the source was a mite bit harder. "How did you know they were vampires?" he asked. "Like, did they turn into bats or die in the sunlight? Why wasn't everyone aware? It seems like... like, if this was real, it would be on the news."

"It was generally the huge fangs and them going for people's throats that tipped me off." Eben said. He started to carefully tug his shirt off, so Gabe could get a good look, and he shifted so his back was to Gabe. "I dunno about the sunlight, I was kinda out of it by then. Bloodloss and all that. And I would think that most people reject the idea of vampires on principal, so that's why it isn't on the news, or wasn't. The human mind will go to great lengths to fill in a blank with something non-fantastic. Or, that's what I've encountered, anyways. I mean, my parents are pretty open minded and they even took a few days to believe me that I've met fae before."

"A fae?" Gabe asked, leaning closer to look at the scars that Eben had exposed. He had an odd interest, he knew, based on the fact that Eben's story held together perfectly, despite being centered around fictional monsters. Or not so fictional monsters. "Do they have teeth too?" he asked, wondering how many of these things bit and tried to kill. It seemed like all of them fell into that category, unfortunately. "It's hard to accept," he said, agreeing with Eben's statement, sure he could be included if it weren't for the shadow things that came to down a few days before.

"Yeah. More than one, they like me." Eben said. "They're interesting." When he figured Gabe had gotten a good enough look, he started to tug his shirt back on. "Fae have teeth...I wouldn't say the ones I met were inclined to eat me though." he added. "So nothing like that. Could you pull my shirt down in back?" he asked when he had it over his head. He was still sore and there were still all those stitches and sprains and all that. "Just the vampires wanted to eat me. And I don't know. What's hard to accept about it? If you think about it in a certain way, it's not all that weird. I mean, it's just one facet of things you didn't know. I'm sure you don't know a lot of things, so this is just one that you do know now."

"It's not the same," Gabe tried to explain as he helped Eben straighten out his shirt. "Like, I don't know rocket science; big deal. But I know the concept, at least in theory. This is like being told that aliens exist. It opens up a whole new can of worms that I thought was safely shut. I guess it's the difference between knowing I don't know and not knowing anything at all. Now I don't even know what I... what I'm missing." While he thought that made sense, he'd also managed to confuse himself in the process.

"You know the concept of vampires and werewolves and all that too, you just didn't know it was possible. But cold fusion is supposedly possible too, it's just science fiction right now." Eben said reasonably. "And I understand the not knowing what you're missing. Honestly I know there's a lot of things I don't know about. I know my girlfriend is a witch. I know that a friend of mine can weave dreams. I know I see lines of probability." he said, shrugging. "I've met fae, I've been bitten by vampires, but I knew another vampire once too and they were just fine. So they're not all the same. I'm pretty sure ghosts exist."

Gabe wondered if Eben had any idea that this was breaking his brain, that it practically hurt to listen and try and take it all in. Vampires, werewolves, witches, and ghosts were all things of fairy tales. They weren't supposed to exist and he honestly didn't want them to. He didn't know if he could handle them, especially all at once. Instead he could only latch on to one at a time and try to unravel the truth there. Maybe if he had an explanation, it would make better sense. "What do you mean, you can see lines of probability?" he asked. For all he knew, it meant Eben was a math genius, and that was something Gabe could easily handle.

Eben tried to think of a way to describe it. "I'm not sure?" he asked. "I...can see sort of how things might go. And sometimes I can tip that into a certain direction I want it to." he said. "..like one of the last shots you made. It could have rolled around the rim and dropped out, or, you could have made it. I tipped it so you made it. Which you might have anyways, I might add, I just made sure you did." He shrugged. "Things like that happen around me all the time though. Random things. Chaos."

"So, can you control me, or can you control the ball?" Gabe asked, slightly confused. He wasn't sure that sounded all that chaotic to him, but more like a sort of space manipulation that he wasn't all that fond of. But he also wasn't willing to say so because it didn't make enough sense for him to speak up at all. He tried to imagine it drawn out, a little diagram with him and all the options that could happen from there. That helped, but even if it made sense, then he wasn't sure how it worked for Eben, why such a power existed. He knew it was something he couldn't do, that was certain.

Eben smiled. "Oh, I can't control anything." he said first. Because he couldn't. But then, Eben was of a mind that control was an illusion. "I definitely can't control you. I can just take existing situations, and the ways they could possibly go, and try and tip them in a certain direction. Doesn't always work, even. And I don't do it all that often, really. I don't do it to people if I don't have to. The only time I remember doing it to a sentient being was when the vampires were trying to kill me. That was extenuating circumstances." He watched Gabe's eyes for a few long moments. "But no. No control. I don't really believe in control. Whatever I can do, it's all just randomness, chaos that I can see a pattern in. People will always have their own will, so will animals. Nothing's truly controllable."

Gabe blinked slowly and took a deep breath. That... made him feel much, much better. Not that he was completely okay with the idea, but it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd thought it was. Maybe someday he'd really understand, but at the moment there was just so much to get a grip on that the best he could do was keep his head above the water. "So just, like, tipping chance. Like lightly weighted die that don't always work." It was easier when compared to basic probability and statistics. Mathematical equations, he could understand. How this applied to real life? He wasn't all that certain. "And you can see this?" he asked. "Or do you mean, your brain just computes it constantly?"

"Yes, like that." Eben said. "Like the dice thing. Only I see it all over the place, with a lot of things. More if I'm actively paying attention. And I literally see it, and my mind makes sense of it. I suppose if I didn't know what I was looking at, I'd have thought I was insane, and been locked up a long time ago. But it's always been there." he explained, voice still that lightly serene kind of tone. comforting, or it was meant to be.

Looking around for a moment, Gabe wondered if there was anything that he always saw that other people didn't see. He could understand what Eben meant, that it seemed natural due to it always being there, but Gabe wasn't entirely sure he would have figured it out on his own, were it him. "Does everyone have something?" he wondered aloud. "How did you find out about all this? Was it just always in your life, from the beginning? Or did it all happen recent?" And if so, Gabe wondered why it was so much easier for Eben to accept than himself, though he thought that was probably due to personality.

"My thing was there from the start. Everything else, that kind of came as I lived. I met the nice vampire years ago, and some fae here and there. My parents and my family traveled a lot, so we saw a lot." he explained. Eben's life had been interesting, that was for sure. "So I suppose it's always been in my life in some fashion or another. I just also think I never disbelieved anything out of hand."

Gabe nodded to himself, his silence unusual for him, but needed in this kind of situation. While it might be easy for Eben, it just wasn't for him. It was oddly frightening and it made him uncomfortable-- if everything Eben said was true, and he suspected it was, then he didn't know the world that he lived in. He only knew half, and the unknown half could be out to get him and he'd have no idea whatsoever. "Maybe I just need time to let it sink in," he finally said. "It's a lot, all at once."

"Oh, I'm sure it is." Eben said sympathetically, and he reached out to pat Gabe's shoulder in what was supposed to be a reassuring manner. "But hey, if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm around. I could give you my number if you wanted it." he offered. Because he was just giving like that, and he didn't especially think someone should be left to deal with things on their own if they didn't have to.

"Thanks," Gabe said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. "I'd appreciate it. It'd be nice to have, just... in case." He didn't want to think about what might come up that would prompt another discussion surrounding these topics, but he had the feeling it would come in handy. He had a lot to think on right now and time was really what he needed. Nothing could speed up the process of acceptance, even on things he'd seen with his own eyes.

Eben rattled off his number, and took out is own cell. "Can I have yours as well?" he asked. "And really, any time you want to call. Even if you'd like to hang out and not talk about reality altering subjects." he added cheerfully.

"Sure," Gabe said, giving Eben his number as well, this time with a smile. "I'm sure there are plenty of other things to discuss. It's just what's on my mind right now, what with all that happened." He'd tried to forget. He'd tried and tried and it just wasn't happening. Maybe talking about it was what he really needed. He'd just have to wait and see.

"There are, but yeah, whatever. We can talk about that, or just hang out, too." Eben said with a nod. He wasn't just a fount of information about the strange, after all. "I suppose I should go check in with my friend Anastasia. But it was nice talking to you, Gabe. Sorry if I went and crashed your world view and everything."

"Naw, it's all good," Gabe said, "You certainly wouldn't be the first. It's just crumbling to pieces, little by little," he laughed. Finding humor in it helped, even if he wasn't all that sure it was the least bit funny. "I'll see you around," he said, climbing to his feet, basketball in hand. "When you're in better shape, we'll have to play a little."

"Sure, though you'd probably kick my ass by default. I'm an artist, not an athlete." Eben said with a wink. Then he turned to head off towards Anastasia's house, wondering how she was doing today. And when he'd see Gabe again, considering the subjects talked about. He also ducked as a branch from a tree he was walking beneath gave way, and nearly pegged him but didn't. All in a day in the live of Eben Willows.